[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi Ipstenu,

thanks very much for taking the time to write back. I’m glad you saw this as a discussion and not something negative towards BBpress.

Maybe i wrote it wrong, but my point is not what “we” the internet community intend BBpress to be, but more what “they” the community of end users want it to be.

BBpress in it’s current form is just a blog. users log on, post a blog, people leave comments. There’s a list of tags, blog posts (sorry “topics”), and um… thats it.

I know, and you know, and i’m sure the intelligent people that have written this lovely bit of code know, that a forum and a blog are very very similar.

When I got into the simplicity of BBpress before the summer, I tried to convince a number of my fellow web enthusiasts to take up the cause. But the more they looked at it, the more disdain they had. I’ve stuck with it, and continue to do so of course, as i thought with each release getting closer to 1.0RC we’d get there.

But we’ve not created a forum.

Forums have a different mindset to Blogs, and don’t get me wrong i’m ok with using plug-ins, it’s just that we’re fixing bugs/issues with a Blog mindset. That is, blogs list things in a singular direction. Forums, by the nature in terms of what the END USER expects, work in a cross polination way.

Yes tags are a good idea, but tags are reliant on the end user.

To give an example:

I recently had to take down BBpress from a backpacker website because the users weren’t putting in tags. The plan being that instead of UK > Scotland > Edinburgh > Travel > Topic that users could just use the UK Travel forum and tag “edinburgh” or “london” etc. Instead, we had 100s of “how do i buy cheap bus tickets” or “cheapest way to travel” or “1 ticket spare” etc with NO tags.

The site lastest 6 weeks before the owner demanded I take it down and replace it with “actual forum software” – that’s a quote from their IT department btw.

But lets give a counter example:

Wordpress.org uses BBpress and it’s working great. Loads of Topics, tags, and few forums. No real need for categories. Same with the technorati one. It’s a credit to BBPress – and nothing can take away from that and the amazing work done by the BBpress team and community… BUT… there’s always a but isn’t there… the people that use WordPress/Technorati are people like us, they are technical, they are used to tags and searching for exactly what they want. They are *not* the typical end user on the internet.

I’m all for free form Ipstenu, i totally get what you mean, and if that suits the needs of your community then great. For me, its suits the needs of some of mine, the problem is as soon as we get into the territory of what people think “all forums” should do, BBpress really starts to look… well, not like a forum.

The more we code, the more we’re coding a wordpress clone, yet not cloning their proven and successful techniques. Our website should match their website (heck, screw the colours, just in terms of layout and user flow), our methods should match their methods. I, no WE, want to help, we want BBpress to be better, but more importantly we want it to fulfil it’s mission statement; and right now that’s not quite happening.

[Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)]

I keep thinking back on this, and I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. I’m not speaking to the HTML/Code side of it, but the concept side. The code side, yeah, some function I would consider default is missing (Unread, maybe Allow Images)

But what’s the difference between a Forum and a Blog?

A blog is a journal. Few people make new topics, many people reply. A forum is … a forum. Many people make new topics, many people reply.

If you feel the code of a Blog is better suited to how you want to run your forum, cool. You want to use the highly structured IPB or phpBB? Have at I picked bbPress not because of the WP integration (I could care less, really) but because it gave me more options than just Category -> Forum -> Topic -> Posts, and because it’s small and lacks a lot of those fancy options.

Example? I don’t use categories at all. Don’t need ’em. I have three ‘fora’ for high level organization. I went off the same general idea I use on my Blog. Three categories, a ton of tags.

1) About the site topic (screwdriver.com is about screwdrivers, talk about them)

2) About the Website (the code behind the site, suggestions, ideas, etc)

3) Everything else (screwdrivers are nice, but I have this hammer…)

Three big, broad categories/fora whatever. The tags I sort of let explode. And even then, I’m torn between structure and free form. I want a little structure (so you don’t get tags like ‘hammer’ and ‘hammers’ which really are the same thing), but I also want freedom.

So function. If you can get all that in a blog, have at Many people do and we call ’em LiveJournal Communities

[kevinjohngallagher]

So, the issue with the method implemented in : https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/hiding-subforums-subforums-from-subforum-pages

is that it only checks for the lineage of the forum before it.

This causes problems when you have multiple children to multiple children, as thus:

category

– Forum1

– – Child 1

– – – Child1’s child

– – Child 2

That method will make BBpress think that Child 2 is actually under Child1’s Child, because when testing if their parents are the same they clearly are not.

Instead, we have to create a nesting code that counts the depth to which we go as we trawl through each parent/child relationship – which is daft as there is a walker->depth function that we just don’t have access to via $GLOBALS.

EDIT:

Update – not knowing if it’s the last forum in a category is starting to kill me a little.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Well, there’s no good way of putting this without making it look like i’m flogging my own dead horse, but here goes:

Can someone tell me why we’re working out vital data in regards to each forum on as CSS links?

Why on Earth don’t we work out each attribute at the start of the loop, and then feed off an object, giving our template developers and therefore users far more options?

As it stands, we call bb_forum_class(); inside the TR, which then creates the $bb_forums_loop object; which calls classes();, and that works out all the attributes of the forum, but rather than sending them back as a usable object the whole thing returns a string of CSS code.

Why not allow template developers access to:

$bb_forums_loop->first_child

$bb_forums_loop->last_child

$bb_forums_loop->bb_root

etc?

I mean, the code itself if great, and the job you’ve done is really good, but it fixes one singular issue (getting the right CSS output), rather than fixing the bigger problem of not knowing all attributes of the forum. Not only does it lead to very messy templates (if someone can be bothered to deal with it – and i’ve not seen a template that has yet), but it does indeed duplicate alot of the work.

[kevinjohngallagher]

At the risk of looking like a double whammy in regards to the non nesting iterations of our outputted code, just using TRs with different classes, i’ve hit across another wee issue – but this time i’m sure there’s a simple solution I just can’t see the relavent code.

I want to be able to know if a forum has children or not, or more specifically when we move up or down a level in the “xPath” iteration.

I’m using a method of using $GLOBALS->forum_parent but what this currently requires me doing is testing to see if the forum has a parent that is not a category, then checking to see if the parent is the same as the previous forums parent, and then output relavent code to nest the forum in an actual parent child format:

Category

– Forum

– Forum

– – Forum

– – Forum

– Forum

This obviously creates havok and rather messy code for the closing of the nestings.

I realise that for small websites this will look like a formatting issue, but once you reach more than 2 levels in a parent child relationship, the ability to control nested relationships makes a huge difference.

Thanks for the help folks

EDIT:

Ok, i think i’ve found half the solution to the issue, and maybe i can phrase the question better now in BBterms…

I want to know, via PHP, before any code has been sent to the browser for the forum, if it is a FIRST CHILD or a LAST CHILD.

Now obviously, BBpress knows this because it’s outputting bb-last-child bb-first-child css, but how can I access these settings on the front-page.php ?

Thanks alot for all the help

[kevinjohngallagher]

Hi BBpress team,

I wanted to raise a concern I’ve had for sometime, but every time I think it’s the right thing to do, there’s a new release and I thought that maybe it’d be fixed. With 1.0 in alpha stage, I figure now’s a good time.

I think we’ve got a lot of this wrong.

Not the code, not the plugins, not the community, but more the mindset behind the important features. We’ve not built forum software, we’ve built blogging software.

We make posts, and people comment on them. The focus of BBpress is on individual posts with things like tags, as opposed to the forum/section/category to which it was posted. I also appreciate the desire to streamline the code base, which is wonderful, but users and the internet-public at large expect forums to have certain features – to rely on user updated plugins for these features is not an ideal solution.

I don’t say any of this to criticise, because you folks have done amazing work given the small team and smaller community working on BBpress, and I’m massively impressed; but I think given the scale of the project you’re working on you’d want real feedback.

Let me give an example if I may, which might illustrate the issue I and other users face.

In the 1.0alpha, we finally get Categories as standard, a feature that is absolutely essential for a forum (not a blog), otherwise the ‘forums’ are just a list of wordpress categories.

The problem with Categories, is that we don’t have ‘forums’ belonging to them, instead we have ‘forums’ that are called categories. A simple 1/0 in a db. But it’s not enough. Why?

Well it means that the loop in front-page.php to iterate through forums has to check to see if it’s a category. There is no independent check for categories and forums. This of course makes no difference in the world of all forums being in a singular table (the category can just be an individual TR and we can use a PHP continue to end the loop), but as soon as we move to multiple tables (which is essential for accessibility focussed websites), or nested divs this becomes quite useless.

What we need its:

Category

Forum

Topic

Forum

Topic

Topic

Reply

Reply

Each belonging to the parent above it. But we don’t have that in BBpress for categories. It’s massively short-sighted.

Now, this may seem like a simple thing, but I raise it as more of a mindset. We’re coming across a bug/issue/problem/feature request and we’re solving that specific request rather than seeing how it fits in. Take, if I may, the brilliant UNREAD POSTS plug-in by _CK_. When it was built it added a class to the specific span of the name of the topic post in the list of topics. Upon request it then did the same to the name of the forums. At no time was the thought process – wait a minute, if I put this at the top level item of the iteration that means that all child nodes can use it. _CK_ fixed this oversight yesterday and his plugin is now brilliant and easily rivalling the methodology used in the bigger forum solutions.

But it’s the mindset behind it I think we need to change. Fixing a singular problem, or even adding a new requested feature, without planning how it will impact others or if it’s at a high enough level is starting to make BBpress look amateurish.

I’m not saying we have to emulate the big boys and their massively bloated software, but what we have to accept, as a community, is that the likes of PHPbb and IPB etc. all do certain functions as standard, and these are what our users will expect.

I can’t see a roadmap or feature list for a finished 1.0 anywhere, I can’t even see a feature list for 1.5 anywhere (and yes I’ve been to the TRAC site for both). I just get the feeling as we move towards 1.0 release, that we’re not really releasing forum software, we’re releasing blogging software:

WordPress: categories > posts > comments

BBpress: forums > topics > replies

These are effectively one and the same. I’m quiety confident that someone could write a WP theme that effectively does what BBpress does. The BBpress front page list topics then forums (with the number of topics /posts in it). A WP page could list blog Posts titles and then categories (with the number of posts / comments in it). They are, to an end user, the one and the same.

I mean, was XML-RPC absolutely essential for BBpress? It seems to me that Categories, or the Unread Posts feature would be far more essential in that other forums have them. Why haven’t we used the same folder structure as WordPress so that we can easily convince wordpress users to also use BB? Heck why isn’t even our website set out in the same way (this may bring over some WP plugin creators)?

These things are not complains, and I do not raise them to flame or criticise in anyway, I merely hope to kick start a little discussion that can see us move BBpress forward. To often in the past few months I’ve suggested BBpress to friends or fellow developers and they’ve told me that it just doesn’t meet their needs – I think that’s something we need to fix, together

Kev

[mithrandir321]

Yeeees, exactly!!! with customizable text in email body

[chrishajer]

> My host says that getmypid is working.

> I built a php info file to check what modules

> were installed, and getmypid wasn’t there.

Well, one thing does not jive with the other. Either it’s enabled or it’s not. Do you have a choice between PHP4 and PHP5? Maybe they’re checking one version and you’re using another. If the web server uses PHP4 by default, but PHP5 is available, you can force PHP5 by adding this to the top of your .htaccess file:

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

To check which version of PHP your pages are being served with, and to see if getmypid is disabled, save this into a file called info.php (or anything.php really):

<?php

phpinfo();

?>

 

Then access that at your host http://www.example.com/info.php, and see what it shows.

[mithrandir321]

Hello, I have this code (which comes from another support thread here) on my front-page.php:

<table id=”highest”>

<?php $top_topics = bb_top_topics(); ?>

<?php foreach ( $top_topics as $topic ) : ?> // line 70

<tr<?php topic_class(); ?>>

<td>“><?php topic_title(); ?>

</td>

<td class=”num”><div class=”rating-holder”><?php bb_rating();?>

<span class=”count”><?php bb_rating_count(); ?>

</span>

</div>

</td></tr>

<?php endforeach; ?>

</table>

And under it the code for latest topics.

It gives me this error:

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/home1/novapojistovna_cz/public_html/www/bbpress/bb-templates/kakumei/front-page.php on line 70

Can anybody help, please. Don’t quite understand what is wrong

Thanks

[Burt Adsit]

I just found your Options and Hybrid themes about 3 days ago. I know where have I been? These are *wildly* great themes for wp guy. Really nice job. I’ve been putting together a wish list for a theme and Options comes scarily close. Thanks for the great theme. Once again, I know, kick in some cash. I will. Can I pay rent first?

[chrishajer]

I am guessing there is a problem in bb-config.php right before line 20, which would be the secure auth key. My guess is something there is not escaped properly. Can you check that? A file editor that has syntax highlighting will show it right away since the string will no longer be color coded as “quoted” if a character is not escaped properly. vim is a good command line editor for this if you have a shell. Notepad++ is good too. Doesn’t matter which editor you use so long as it can do syntax highlighting for a php file.

[sc0ttbeardsley]

OK, I’ve looked at the other thread and looked at the cookie interaction on my site and have it working. I did have to make a change to my wordpress installation to get it to work. Here is what I did:

My wordpress installation is at sacbikekitchen.org

My bbpress installation is at sacbikekitchen.org/forum/

I added the following to my /forum/bb-config.php:

$bb->cookiedomain = '.sacbikekitchen.org';

$bb->sitecookiepath = '/';

I added the following to my /wp-config.php:

define('COOKIE_DOMAIN', '.sacbikekitchen.org');

define('COOKIEPATH', '/');

Then I made a couple additions to the wp-includes/pluggable.php file:

Around line 596 I added:

setcookie(LOGGED_IN_COOKIE, $logged_in_cookie, $expire, '/forum/', COOKIE_DOMAIN);

setcookie($auth_cookie_name, $auth_cookie, $expire, '/forum/bb-plugins', COOKIE_DOMAIN);

setcookie($auth_cookie_name, $auth_cookie, $expire, '/forum/my-plugins', COOKIE_DOMAIN);

setcookie($auth_cookie_name, $auth_cookie, $expire, '/forum/bb-admin', COOKIE_DOMAIN);

Around line 620 I added:

setcookie(LOGGED_IN_COOKIE, ' ', time() - 31536000, '/forum/', COOKIE_DOMAIN);

setcookie(AUTH_COOKIE, ' ', time() - 31536000, '/forum/bb-plugins', COOKIE_DOMAIN);

setcookie(AUTH_COOKIE, ' ', time() - 31536000, '/forum/my-plugins', COOKIE_DOMAIN);

setcookie(AUTH_COOKIE, ' ', time() - 31536000, '/forum/bb-admin', COOKIE_DOMAIN);

Hope it helps…

[vadi]

Hi,

I’m receiving the following error when importing an eximported bbfx file:

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /var/www/forums/bb-plugins/bbxf/importer/bbxf-parse.php on line 99

The line in question is preg_match ('|<' . preg_quote ($element) . '.*?>.*?</' . preg_quote ($element) . '>|s', $data, $items);, which looks okay…

Is there anything I can do to fix it? I was kind of relying on this plugin for importing, didn’t want to mess with databases directly.

[mazzhe]

I have the same problem… I have installed today wp2.6.3 and bbp1.0-alpha1(fr), and I have the same “minor” problem : no forum. I’m happy it’s not a “major” problem !

[Klark0]

I count the number of blogs and the number of the posts using two queries. All posts from all the other blogs are copied to blog_id 1. So i do like so

$count_posts = wp_count_posts();

echo $count_posts->publish;

and

$stats = get_sitestats();

$tmp_blog_count = number_format ($stats[ 'blogs' ] );

print "".$tmp_blog_count." blogs";

Can bbpress grab those ?

[chrishajer]

@globetrotterdk:

define('AUTH_SALT', 'AUTHSALT');

define('LOGGED_IN_SALT', 'LOGGEDINSALT');

 

Where did you add those?

Also, can you do a fresh installation? It’s possible something was not entered properly into one of the fields. There is a lot of text to read to get all the cookie settings right.

[jonkristian]

Hm, turns out I still have trouble accessing admin panel in bbpress. Straange, I tested it with login via both bbpress and wp the last time, however now, it doesn’t seem to work.

Regarding the setup, i followed Deadpan’s setup down to the very last line, except that i kept the hash in

$bb->logged_in_cookie = ‘wordpress_logged_in_ikeptthishashin’;

[dchest]

I wrote a plugin to add reCAPTCHA to user registration page. (It’s inspired by _ck_’s Human Test.)

I’ve submitted request to add it to the plugin repository, however 1) the submission form didn’t have any feedback, so I ended up with two identical requests, 2) I didn’t realize you have to put the whole readme.txt to description field of this form. Could someone fix this, and write at least a few sentences describing the submission process?

Anyway, you can download it from http://www.codingrobots.com/files/bb-recaptcha.zip

IMPORTANT: You must get an API key from the reCAPTCHA project to use it. See readme.txt.

Tested under 1.0-alpha1, may not work with previous versions on some PHP deployments.

See how it works here: http://forum.codingrobots.com/register.php

Comments and code review are welcome!

[_ck_]

You could easily turn this into a more standardized script by starting the code with require('./bb-load.php'); to load the bbPress code and check user authorization, and then if (!bb_current_user_can(administrate)) {exit;}

The mysql_query( would become $bbdb->query( and you’d have to do a global $bbdb; once at the top too. Just for completeness you might want to look at some of the functions in bb-do-counts.php in bb-admin.

Actually it would be fairly easy to turn it into a full blown plugin for the admin menu.

[_ck_]

It might be possible to create the MediaWiki cookie from the bbPress side and visa versa.

From the mediawiki side, you could do something as simple as

require('./bb-load.php');

wp_set_auth_cookie( (int) $user_id,0 );

Which will create the bbPress cookie. Where $user_id is the user’s bbPress id. Since you are using the same user table, it should be available?

[lstelie]

Thaks,

I’ll try this way for next time, in the meantime I ended using PhpMyAdmin to delete post and tipic with status=1

I hope this fucntionality will make its way in the core because it can become a real problem.

I had a problematic user, I first deleted all his messages (deleted, but not really deleted as BBPress don’t really delete) then I deleted his account.

A few hours later he recreated his accoun and suddently all supposedly deleted messages appeared with “anonymous” has author…. very strange.

Using phpMyAdmin the problem is gone

How to use your script ?

Thanks again

[Gregg]

Im integrating my second wp and bb site and this time around it seems there are some easier steps only I cant get this setup to work. I can login to the WP side fine. But when i login from bb side it just redirects to the forum homepage. It will login the person on the wp side but not let them do a thing on the bb side.

I dont have admin access until wipe out the theme and clear the cookies. its very strange.

I followed all steps correctly in the writeup. any help would be much appreciated.

here is what my bb-config file looks like

require_once('/path/to/blog/wp-blog-header.php');

// ** MySQL settings ** //

define(‘BBDB_NAME’, ‘db’); // The name of the database

define(‘BBDB_USER’, ‘user’); // Your MySQL username

define(‘BBDB_PASSWORD’, ‘pswd’); // …and password

define(‘BBDB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change these last few

define(‘BBDB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8’); // If you are *upgrading*, and your old bb-config.php does

define(‘BBDB_COLLATE’, ”); // not have these two contstants in them, DO NOT define them

// If you are installing for the first time, leave them here

define(‘COOKIEPATH’, ‘/’ );

define(‘SITECOOKIEPATH’, ‘/’);

// Change BB_SECRET_KEY to a unique phrase. You won’t have to remember it later,

// so make it long and complicated. You can visit https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

// to get a phrase generated for you, or just make something up.

// If you are integrating logins with WordPress, you will need to match the value

// of the “SECRET_KEY” in the WordPress file wp-config.php

define(‘BB_SECRET_KEY’, ‘secretkeydotcom’); // Change this to a unique phrase.

// If you are running multiple bbPress installations in a single database,

// you will probably want to change this.

$bb_table_prefix = ‘bb_’; // Only letters, numbers and underscores please!

// Change this to localize bbPress. A corresponding MO file for the

// chosen language must be installed to bb-includes/languages.

// For example, install de.mo to bb-includes/languages and set BB_LANG to ‘de’

// to enable German language support.

define(‘BB_LANG’, ”);

/* Stop editing */

if ( !defined(‘BB_PATH’) )

define(‘BB_PATH’, dirname(__FILE__) . ‘/’ );

require_once( BB_PATH . ‘bb-settings.php’ );

$bb->wp_siteurl = ‘http://www.site.com/blog/&#8217;;

// that’s your WordPress URL, not bbPress

$bb->wp_home = ‘http://www.site.com/blog/&#8217;;

// almost always the same as siteurl unless you tinker

$bb->wp_table_prefix = ‘wp_’;

// should almost always be wp_ unless you tinkered

$bb->user_bbdb_name = ‘db’;

// this is the MYSQL database name for *WordPress*

// you can copy it right out of WordPress !

$bb->user_bbdb_user = ‘user’;

// this is the MYSQL user name for *WordPress*

// you can copy it right out of WordPress !

$bb->user_bbdb_password = ‘pswd’;

// this is the MYSQL password for *WordPress*

// you can copy it right out of WordPress !

$bb->user_bbdb_host = ‘localhost’;

// 99.9% of the time it’s going to be localhost, unless you are on DreamHost or some other weird ISP

$bb->custom_user_table = ‘wp_users’;

// 99.9% of the time it’s going to be wp_users

$bb->custom_user_meta_table = ‘wp_usermeta’;

// 99.9% of the time it’s going to be wp_usermeta

$bb->authcookie = ‘wordpress_randomnumbers’;

// in theory you should be able to leave this out

// but this is going to be copied from WordPress cookie

// this *must* match the WordPress setting

// do NOT use the 1234567 part, use your own cookiehash from WordPress – see the note at the very bottom

$bb->cookiedomain = ‘.site.com’;

// note the leading DOT – this is important

// this *must* match the WordPress setting

$bb->cookiepath = ‘/’;

// I *highly* recommend you set the cookie path to /

// this *must* match the WordPress setting

$bb->sitecookiepath = ‘/’;

// I *highly* recommend you set the cookie path to /

// this *must* match the WordPress setting

//tried this – doesnt work with or without…ugh

$bb->usercookie = ‘wordpressuser_randomnumbers’;

$bb->passcookie = ‘wordpresspass_randomnumbers’;

[_ck_]

Any guide that is for WordPress plugins should work for bbPress, it’s just that bbPress’s “hooks” (do_action, do_filter) will be named differently.

bbPress is unfortunately too young to have decent documentation yet. WordPress itself didn’t really “take off” until 2.0 beta came out.

This is essentially the plugin framework you need:

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: My Tag Sort

*/

remove_filter('sort_tag_heat_map', 'bb_sort_tag_heat_map');

add_filter('sort_tag_heat_map', 'my_sort_tag_heat_map');



function my_sort_tag_heat_map( &$tag_counts ) {

// put your replacement code here

}

?>

Save it as my-tag-sort.php, put it into the bbpress/my-plugins folder, activate and you’re in business (well after you figure out the sort method).

Typically you’d have to do a return $tag_counts; at the end of a filter but that & on the &$tag_counts means it’s “passed by refererence” which is a fancy way of using the original array directly without making a copy, so the original is changed at the source when you modify it. It’s a much faster way to move large amounts of info around.

[jonkristian]

Deadpan11 , I followed your guide and it worked excellent, however I had to keep the hash on:

$bb->logged_in_cookie = ‘wordpress_logged_in_’;

Setup, http://forums.domain.com & http://domain.com

I can now log in via the forums, and access both admin panels, and via wp, and still access both. If I log out of either, I am logged out of both.

[myu]

Thanks for reply, ck.

I didn’t know how to make plugins..

So, anywhere that say

apply_filter('___', '___');

can be replaced?

Now.. about original question:

$tag_counts is

• key: raw_tag
• value: how many times topics are tagged with this tag

Googling a bit more made me realize, there’re problems associated with ordering Japanese words/strings as there’re 2 types of letters and chinese character used.

strnatcasecmp() seem to put things in order of

1. hiragana in ascending
2. katakana in ascending
3. chinese characters in encoding#

ssetlocale(LC_COLLATE, "jp", "jpn");

ksort($tag_counts, SORT_LOCALE_STRING);

shows exactly the same result.

It seems pretty impossible (for me) to order them.

I will flip it to descending, with krsort(); just so the tag “other” won’t come to start.